What the Nanny-State Goddess Giveth… The intermittent power of wind towers plays havoc with electricity grids. Power black outs in India are so bad, they cut off the supply to 600 million or so people for two days last year. To make the grid more stable, an official somewhere decided it would help to have at least one day’s warning of how much electricity will flow from those towers. (Why not two days I say?) “A directive took effect this week ordering wind farms with a capacity of 10 megawatts or more to forecast their generation in 15-minute blocks for the following day. “ To put some perspective on this, here is what 7000 wind turbines across Northern Europe (between the North sea, the Baltic Sea and the Austrian-Swiss border) produced in 2004. You can admire the stable predictable output that comes from averaging so many turbines over such a large area. Right? Percentage of peak grid power supplied by 7000 wind turbines in Northern Europe in 2004 Sources: German Eon Netz (E.ON) Wind Report 2005, Windenergy and WiseEnergy.org (Wind Energy Facts and Fiction: A Half Truth is a Whole Lie p 7) [Bloomberg] Wind Forecast […]Rating: 10.0/10 (1 vote cast)